Abstract
The “learned council” of Jirmānūs Farḥāt (1670-1732) often surfaces as illustrative of ecumenical humanism in the Levant in the century leading up to the Arab Nahḍa (Renaissance). Primary information about the group however is essentially nonexistent, prompting the regurgitation of facts culled from a discrete number of early 20th -century researches on Farḥāt and his colleagues. This essay puts the historical existence of Farḥāt’s “learned council” on trial and argues that it never existed; nonetheless, its historiographical existence is undeniable. Based on a lexicographical study of the Arabic phrase “learned council (majmaʿ ʿilmī)” and a meticulous review of extant scholarship on the group, I claim that the 18th -century group was conjured into existence in the 20th century. I contend that Catholic Maronite scholars invented Farḥāt’s “learned council” in order to insert their confessional community into a crystalizing Protestantdriven narrative of the Nahḍa, which then Western historians reinterpreted as evidence of Arab Christian literary activity more broadly. This essay provides an example of dialectical historiography and calls for the careful reevaluation of some “facts” that have infiltrated Nahḍa Studies.Keywords: Farḥāt, learned council, majmaʿ, Nahḍa, historiography
Highlights
Ǧirmānūs Farḥāt (1670-1732) embodies the humanist spirit of the Arab Nahḍa (Renaissance), a cultural phenomenon characterized by literary, social, and political transformations in the Arabic-speaking world in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Based on a lexicographical study of the Arabic phrase “learned council” and a meticulous review of extant scholarship on the group, I claim that the 18th-century group was conjured into existence in the 20th century
I contend that Catholic Maronite scholars invented Farḥāt’s “learned council” in order to insert their confessional community into a crystalizing Protestantdriven narrative of the Nahḍa, which Western historians reinterpreted as evidence of Arab Christian literary activity more broadly
Summary
Ǧirmānūs Farḥāt (1670-1732) embodies the humanist spirit of the Arab Nahḍa (Renaissance), a cultural phenomenon characterized by literary, social, and political transformations in the Arabic-speaking world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I suggest that scholars invented this “learned council,” retrojected it into the historical record, and apotheosized its founder as a cultural icon.[13] This study recounts how the 20th century historicized 18thcentury Aleppo in light of events that transpired in the Levant in the 19th century It provides an example of dialectical historiography in the modern Arab Middle East and pleads for the discriminate use of certain “facts” from and about the Nahḍa that have in actuality never been thoroughly investigated. I conclude that historians retroactively established this confraternity under the superintendence of Ǧirmānūs Farḥāt to exhibit the active practice of literary humanism among learned Christian users of Arabic in the century prior to the Arab Nahḍa itself
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